


something i could have survived

by nosecoffee



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Extended Metaphors, Gen, Ghosts?, Hurt, I'm sorry Zoe, Implied/Referenced Suicide, The Author Regrets Nothing, no comfort, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 08:24:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12931377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: It kind of hurts how much she can recall from that morning. Every twitch and every hitch of breath and every accusation.The way he had grinned, wickedly, at Zoe across the table when their mother had insisted he wasn’t high. She remembers he used to smile at her that way all the time, without needing weed to keep him smiling.Zoe used to love the kitchen table.(things you said at the kitchen table)





	something i could have survived

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PrinceDrew](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceDrew/gifts).



> Title from "Door Number Three" from Waitress (it's a cut song, but it's still from the musical)
> 
> This was a prompt that I answered on Tumblr and then realised was long enough to go on AO3 so, here we are

Zoe used to love the kitchen table. It was round, could fit as many people as they needed, if they really squeezed them in, and dark wood. They had rotating fabric napkins and placemats. Her mother used to make them herself, until she got bored of sewing. Zoe still has her personalised one from Christmas, the year her mother still sewed. The pink has faded with time and too many washes.

There’s a darker spot on the table than the rest, one side of the table no longer occupied. They stopped setting a fourth place not too long ago.

Zoe remembers birthday parties and Christmas’s and Thanksgiving’s, gathered around this table, remembers all the fights, all the silverware clattering in the ground, all the crockery and glasses smacking on the tiles, all the spilled gravy and candle wax.

Zoe misses when she loved the kitchen table.

Zoe misses when she used to look forward to family meals at the kitchen table.

Zoe misses inviting people to sit there.

Too many people know where her kitchen table is, now. Too many people know which window is hers, and which house is hers.

But, no. She’s spent so much time being angry. That’s not why she’s here. Zoe got to be angry, for a time. Zoe relished that anger. She got to be sad, too. She doesn’t know which she prefers.

The blinding fury, or the absolute catatonic breaking of her heart.

Zoe used to love the kitchen table.

She remembers when she used to share it with her family. Her whole family. The four of them, packed in neatly, and not too tight. Back before she waged a war every time the clinking of cutlery began, back before the icy glances and the sharp words and the broken crockery and voices.

Zoe misses it.

She misses him.

(She shouldn’t.)

Zoe can conjure him up in her mind. Can see him, sitting, moodily, across from her, slumped over his bowl of cereal, not even eating it, just running his spoon through it like an oar, like the goddamned cereal bowl will take him somewhere else.

Anywhere else.

Zoe knows the feeling, now.

It kind of hurts how much she can recall from that morning. Every twitch and every hitch of breath and every accusation.

The way he had grinned, wickedly, at Zoe across the table when their mother had insisted he wasn’t high. She remembers he used to smile at her that way all the time, without needing weed to keep him smiling.

Zoe used to love the kitchen table.

Something about sharing it with a liar, a liar who let her fall in love with him, makes her feel sick to her stomach. Maybe it’s just the liar, but it extends to everything he ever touched, everything he came in contact with, everything he said.

“This isn’t about a goddamned table.” She’s too tired to react, properly. It’s the middle of the night, for fucks sake.

She can barely see him in the light that the moon gives through the kitchen window, but his skin seems to glow.

“And if it is?” Zoe grumbles back, wrapping her arms around her knees, pulling them up to her chest. They need to replace the cushions tied to their chairs. They’re not as firm as they used to be.

“Then why are you thinking about me?” Connor asks, and seems to uncurl. He’s dressed in the clothes they found him in. Zoe wonders when he stopped wearing colours.

“It’s hard not to.” She says, and tries to tear her eyes away from him, not give him power. She can’t, though. “It’s like I’m living in a museum of Connor.”

He shrugs, not openly displaying whether or not he’s pleased with this. “It’s still not about the table.”

“I wish it was.” Her voice sounds so bitter, so unlike the voice she’s used to hearing. Zoe remembers a time when she only ever used that voice jokingly. Now, she uses it more seriously than she’d like. “It’d be easier to mourn a table. We could give it a Vikings funeral, out on the river.”

“Have more opinions on an inanimate object’s funeral than mine?” He shakes his head and smiles his wicked smile through a curtain of greasy brown hair. “Tsk, tsk.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Zoe snaps and feels anger rise red and hot in her chest when ConnorMs smile widens. “You were never supposed to go. It was supposed to be you and me, together. I never should have had to bury you while we were both so young.”

He shakes his head again, skin crinkling around his eyes in a way that makes him look like the little boy in pictures that live in boxes in the attic now. “You don’t get it.” Connor says to her, as if he’s told her a riddle and she can’t work it out. She’s so tired.

“You’re right, I don’t. Nothing makes sense anymore. I don’t know how to feel.” Her voice rises in volume, and Zoe can’t bring herself to care about how it echoes off the tiled splashback over the stove. “Everything’s so confusing and chaotic, and I can’t sleep because I’m afraid someone’s gonna break into the house or throw a rock through my window or light the goddamned house on fire because I got doxxed for your suicide note, which wasn’t even your suicide note!”

“Zoe?” Her mother is standing on the bottom step of the staircase. She’s staring at Zoe. There’s no one in Connor’s seat, no one playing with the salt shaker.

Zoe rubs her face. “Sorry, mom. I just got…I couldn’t sleep.”

“You okay?” She moves forward and crouches down beside Zoe who unfolds like a fabric napkin from the chair.

"Yeah. I’m gonna go back to bed, now.” Her mother nods and rises to her feet. Zoe kisses her on the cheek as she passes. “Night, mom.” She walks halfway up the stairs and looks over her shoulder. Her mother’s hand rests on the back of Connor’s seat. She swallows a lump in her throat and climbs the rest of the stairs.

It’s not about the table. He’s right. But she still misses when she liked sitting there.

 

**fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I hope you liked it (or didn't, as the case may be). Please leave a comment and/or a kudos, and track me down on Tumblr @nosecoffee. Send me a prompt, if you'd like.
> 
> Again, thanks!


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